Leading Health & Social Care In A Multi-Agency Environment Case Study

Introduction: Leading Health & Social Care In A Multi-Agency Environment

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Part 1: Analysis of key policy documents

In order to improve the overall well-being of the citizen, the government always develops and implements new policies. The role of the leaders and managers of health and social care is to implement those policies for the people. This assessment aims to find two policies and analyse those to find their effectiveness of the policies. As said before, leaders and managers are the ones who are responsible for implementation. Hence, this assessment also discusses how the chosen policy concerns the leaders and managers. The chosen policies are “Health and Social Care Act 2012” and “Personalized Health and Care 2020”.

Rationale

The aim of the "Health and Social Care Act 2012" is to improve the overall health of the population, especially for people who are living with multiple conditions (gov.uk, 2022). The reason for choosing this policy is that proper implementation of these policies by the leaders will improve the health condition of the country. It has been seen that referral and collaboration are very important in the medical field to generate the best outcome for the patient. According to Prosser, (2018), this policy also aims to improve collaboration along with partnership-working in the medical sector. Hence, a long-term effect can be seen.

“Personalized Health and Care 2020" is also an important policy that focuses on person-centric treatment (kingsfund.org.uk, 2022). The role of this policy is to give more control to the patient in his or her well-being and treatment. This policy is chosen for analysis because the concept of "person-cantered care" is new and implementing those required more planning and effort by the leaders and managers. As stated by the expert Prosser, (2018), this policy is also important to provide more effective care to the patient. Hence, analysis of this policy can provide knowledge on person-cantered care in modern treatment.

Policy discussion

Policy 1

The first chosen policy for the discussion is the "Health and Social Care Act 2012". This act introduced significant reforms in the health care services of the United Kingdom, especially England. According to Alderwick, Gardner, and Mays (2021), the main focus of the act is to include some target-based change in the health and social care system in terms of quality and safety. On the other hand, collaboration and partnership are also promoted in this policy. The formalization of ICS or "integrated care system" is done for the implementation of the policy. As a result, local authorities are able to collaborate with the NHS to collectively plan health and social care (gov.uk, 2022). The act also promotes significant changes in the procedure of organizing integrated care by the NHS. Hence, various barriers were removed due to the joined service. Besides, “local discretion” was enabled due to the policy.

Due to the policy more power has been given to the "Secretary of State" for the configuration of the local services. Some of the late changes were also included in the act in order to limit the power of substantial and complex changes. As stated by Ocloo et al. (2021), the NHS and the local authority can consult and give a six months’ time limit and the secretary needs to make a decision within that time. However, the government stated that this power can be used occasionally. The secretary of state also received some general power to direct the NHS of England. However, due to the increased range of functions, the power should be used rarely by the authorities (kingsfund.org.uk, 2022). Hence, this increases the opportunity for the minister to intervene with clinical independence and another decision-making process. However, this act will not bring any immediate changes and it will take time.

Policy 2

The second chosen policy for the analysis is "Personalized Health and Care 2020". It has been seen that technology has the power to improve health and social care facilities. Hence, this policy is developed. As stated by the experts Chén, and Roberts (2021), the main aim of this policy is to "use technology and data to transform the health of citizens and patients". A framework for action is also developed for the implementation. There are twelve sections of this policy and each of the sections describes some important part of the policy. The sections discuss forward views to mitigate the gap between "health and wellbeing, care & quality, and funding and efficiency". According to Forsyth et al. (2021), the expected outcome of the policies are to empower caregivers, give citizens and patients more control over the treatment, reduce administrative burden, and support R & D of new medicine. Evidence from different sources has been taken before developing the framework. However, this is not a national plan; rather this can be considered as an action plan, which is developed to support the patient and frontline workers. 

The responsibility of the “National Information Board” is to analyse the progress, review those each year and provide suggestions (kingsfund.org.uk, 2022). The leaders and managers have seen this framework beneficial as personalized health care can improve the condition of patients, especially for those with complex diseases. On the other hand, this also falls under medical ethics to inform the patient of all the details about health conditions, treatment, and the after-effects. Hence, the patient can decide what is good for him or her. As explained by the experts Chén, and Roberts (2021), the condition of the patient can be improved with person-cantered care. Besides, the use of technology can help leaders and managers to implement the framework more effectively.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above discussion that governments always develop or modify policies of health and social care based on the requirement. The aim of this is to improve the social and health care system of the country. However, the implementation of the policies is done by the leaders and managers of the healthcare organization. In this assessment, two policies have been analysed, one is discussed the overlap of health improvement and another one has discussed the personalized care of the patient. Leaders and managers faced many challenges while implementing these policies. However, proper leadership skills and strategy can help to mitigate those.

Part 2: Case study evaluation

Introduction

In this section of the assessment a case study analysis is done. The chosen case study for this section is "Protecting children from criminal exploitation, human trafficking and modern slavery: an addendum". The reason for choosing this case study is that it is relevant to social care and also focuses on an important topic called "criminal exploitation of children", which is a serious concern for children. Hence, the case study analysis is done along with the rationale, methodology, and evaluation of the outcome. The lessons for the leaders and managers and the implementation plan are also discussed in this section.

Case study

Rationale

The criminal exploitation of children has been a media sensation for some years in the United Kingdom. According to the authors Robinson, McLean, and Densley, (2019), various illegal activities of crime have been reported in the country line. Criminals are using vulnerable children to sell and transport illegal items like drugs or other substances. The crimes were mainly happening in the coastal town and rural areas, where they established new drug markets (Ofsted, 2018). Though investigations are going on, there are still many gaps. On the other hand, drug selling is a lucrative business model for vulnerable children. As they have very little understanding of the issues, they tend to go for it (Maxwell et al. 2019). In addition, many times children are forced or blackmailed to work for them. Hence, analysing this case study will provide a better understanding of different levels of criminal offenses with children.

In this case study, joint investigations of the "Care Quality Commission, HMI Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and Ofsted '' are analysed and compared (Ofsted, 2018). As these organizations perform authentic investigations, this case study report contains authentic data, which will increase the accuracy of this assessment. Besides, this is an opportunity to discuss significant learning and implement those in the “understanding, practice and knowledge” to identify and save children from exploitation. As stated by Robinson, McLean, and Densley, (2019), this case study report is not just a summary of the three investigation reports, rather it analyses critically all those investigations with examples. Besides, the work of various agencies has been added to the report though the name and locations are anonymised (Ofsted, 2018). Ares for improvements is also added in the report. Hence, this will help the leaders and managers to take necessary steps to save those children from criminals as a matter of social care.

Methodology

The methodology is an important part of any journal. There are various types of methodologies for the collection and analysis of data. In this report, it has been seen that the author has chosen the "secondary qualitative" methodology for completing the report. According to Nayak, and Singh (2021), the "secondary research method" is defined as when the author collects data from already existing sources, which can be journals, books, websites, reports, and others. In this case, three investigation papers of Ofsted, CQC, and HMICFRS are chosen for the collection of information. All these mentioned organizations' have performed investigations on the exploitation of a child and other crimes related to that (Ofsted, 2018). Hence, this method helps to collect authentic and relevant data for this report. Therefore, it can be said that the method was appropriate for the report. However the addition of quantitative data along with qualitative could have been more beneficial as numerical data help to interpret the outcome logically.

Evaluation

The research has interpreted the outcome beautifully. Previously it was believed that only some specific groups of children are prone to the issues. However, as per the findings of this report, all children are vulnerable to exploitation (Villacampa, and Torres, 2019). The outcome also stated the procedure to ensure the safety of the children. On the other hand, it also found the gap between the agencies and their work, which can provide possible scope for improvement. According to expert Firmin, (2020), this report found all three important parts which are the "problem, solution, and scope of improvement" of child exploitation. It can be said that the findings are relevant to the aim of the report. Besides, as the study is made from authentic data, it increases the accuracy of the findings. Hence, this helps to generate a quality outcome in this report.

Lesson for leaders

This report covered the problem associated with child exploitation and crime. Besides, the lack of proper work of many agencies and leaders is also covered. Hence, this would help to identify the possible lack in the strategy so that leaders and managers can learn from it and improve their strategy.

• The leaders and managers of the organization need to ensure that all the frontline workers have enough knowledge to identify child exploitation. There are many signs and symptoms of exploitation (Ofsted, 2018). Proper expertise in the identification of symptoms may help to save the child before any serious crime even if the symptoms appear consensual.
• The leaders and managers of the police department also need to ensure that police are working properly and they are able to identify the symptoms of the crime. Not all frontline police workers have the training to deal with modern slavery and child exploitation. The role of the leaders is to prepare the frontline staff for the challenges like this.
• According to Kaldal, (2020), managers and leaders need to adopt a “multi-agency model”, where they can form more than one agency but work in a collaborative manner with the same aim, information, and responsibility.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above discussion that many children in the United Kingdom are prone to child exploitation. The problem is mainly seen in the country line, coastal area, and rural areas. Children are exploited both can be physically, sexually, and emotionally. Besides, blackmailing is also common in some cases. However, the role of the managers and leaders is huge to control crime and save the children. Leaders can teach the frontline workers of the agencies and policies to identify the symptoms of the crime and take the correct step to reduce it. Besides, the multi-agency model can also be used

Reference list

Part 1

Book

• Prosser, S. (2018) Effective people: leadership and organization development in healthcare. Boca Raton: USA: CRC Press

Journals

• Alderwick, H., Gardner, T. and Mays, N., 2021. England’s new health and care bill. bmj, 374.
• Chén, O.Y. and Roberts, B., 2021. Personalized health care and public health in the digital age. Frontiers in Digital Health, 3, p.595704.
• Forsyth, J.R., Chase, H., Roberts, N.W., Armitage, L.C. and Farmer, A.J., 2021. Application of the national Institute for health and care excellence evidence standards framework for digital health technologies in assessing mobile-delivered technologies for the self-management of type 2 diabetes mellitus: Scoping review. JMIR diabetes, 6(1), p.e23687.
• Ocloo, J., Garfield, S., Franklin, B.D. and Dawson, S., 2021. Exploring the theory, barriers and enablers for patient and public involvement across health, social care and patient safety: a systematic review of reviews. Health research policy and systems, 19(1), pp.1-21.

Part 2

Books

• Firmin, C., 2020. Contextual safeguarding and child protection: Rewriting the rules. UK: Routledge.
• Nayak, J.K. and Singh, P., 2021. Fundamentals of research methodology problems and prospects. India: SSDN Publishers & Distributors.

Case study

• Ofsted, 2018. Protecting children from criminal exploitation, human trafficking and modern slavery: An addendum.

Journals

• Kaldal, A., 2020. COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF LEGISLATION RELATED TO BARNAHUS IN NORDIC COUNTRIES: Public consultation process of the draft Child protection in criminal proceedings and comprehensive treatment of children in the Children's House Act2of 1 June 2020.
• Maxwell, N., Wallace, C., Cummings, A., Bayfield, H. and Morgan, H., 2019. A systematic map and synthesis review of child criminal exploitation.
• Robinson, G., McLean, R. and Densley, J., 2019. Working county lines: Child criminal exploitation and illicit drug dealing in Glasgow and Merseyside. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 63(5), pp.694-711.
• Villacampa, C. and Torres, N., 2019. Human trafficking for criminal exploitation: Effects suffered by victims in their passage through the criminal justice system. International review of victimology, 25(1), pp.3-18.